The origin of the name manganese is complex. In ancient times, two black minerals were identified from the regions of the
Magnetes (either
Magnesia, located within modern Greece, or
Magnesia ad Sipylum, located within modern Turkey). They were both called
magnes from their place of origin, but were considered to differ in sex. The male
magnes attracted iron, and was the iron ore now known as
lodestone or
magnetite, and which probably gave us the term
magnet. The female
magnes ore did not attract iron, but was used to decolorize glass. This female
magnes was later called
magnesia, known now in modern times as
pyrolusite or
manganese dioxide. Neither this mineral nor elemental manganese is magnetic. In the 16th century, manganese dioxide was called
manganesum (note the two Ns instead of one) by glassmakers, possibly as a corruption and concatenation of two words, since
alchemists and glassmakers eventually had to differentiate a
magnesia nigra (the black ore) from
magnesia alba (a white ore, also from Magnesia, also useful in glassmaking). Italian physician
Michele Mercati called magnesia nigra
manganesa, and finally the metal isolated from it became known as
manganese (). The name
magnesia was eventually used to refer only to the white magnesia alba (magnesium oxide), which provided the name
magnesium for the free element when it was isolated much later. ,
France, use manganese-based pigments. Manganese dioxide, which is abundant in nature, has long been used as a pigment. The cave paintings in
Gargas that are 30,000 to 24,000 years old are made from the mineral form of MnO2 pigments. Manganese compounds were used by Egyptian and Roman glassmakers, either to add to, or remove, color from glass. Use as "glassmakers soap" continued through the
Middle Ages until modern times and is evident in 14th-century glass from
Venice. By the mid-18th century, the Swedish chemist
Carl Wilhelm Scheele used manganese dioxide to produce
chlorine. First,
hydrochloric acid, or a mixture of dilute
sulfuric acid and
sodium chloride was made to react with manganese dioxide, and later hydrochloric acid from the
Leblanc process was used and the manganese dioxide was recycled by the
Weldon process. Ignatius Gottfried Kaim also may have reduced manganese dioxide to isolate the metal, but that is uncertain. The manganese content of some iron ores used in Greece led to speculations that steel produced from that ore contains additional manganese, making the
Spartan steel exceptionally hard. Around the beginning of the 19th century, manganese was used in steelmaking and several patents were granted. In 1816, it was documented that iron alloyed with manganese was harder but not more brittle. In 1837, British academic
James Couper noted an association between miners' heavy exposure to manganese and a form of
Parkinson's disease. In 1912, United States patents were granted for protecting firearms against rust and corrosion with manganese phosphate electrochemical conversion coatings, and the process has seen widespread use ever since. The invention of the
Leclanché cell in 1866 and the subsequent improvement of batteries containing manganese dioxide as cathodic
depolarizer increased the demand for manganese dioxide. Until the development of batteries with
nickel–cadmium and lithium, most batteries contained manganese. The
zinc–carbon battery and the
alkaline battery normally use industrially produced manganese dioxide because naturally occurring manganese dioxide contains impurities. In the 20th century, manganese dioxide was widely used as the cathode for commercial disposable dry batteries of both the standard (zinc–carbon) and alkaline types. Manganese is essential to iron and
steel production by virtue of its
sulfur-fixing,
deoxidizing, and
alloying properties. == Occurrence ==